IPL 2018 Auction Schedule: Complete Team, Player Retention, Date and Venue Details of IPL 11

Indian Premier League is all set to return with its 11th season in April 2018. Cricket lovers are desperately waiting for IPL 11 as the upcoming season will see the participation of tournament’s original eight teams. Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals are making a return after serving two years of suspension due to their involvement in 2013 IPL spot-fixing and betting case. They will replace Rising Pune Supergiant and Gujarat Lions. However, the bigger question – Will MS Dhoni head back to Chennai Super Kings and moreover be the CSK captain? The queries pertaining to player retention will be cleared in IPL 2018 player auction. It is scheduled to take place on January 27 and 28 in Bengaluru.

A senior BCCI official informed about the impending IPL 2018 auction schedule. He was quoted saying, "Since most of the capped players will be back in an auction, it will be a mega auction that will be held in Bengaluru on January 27 and 28. Since Bengaluru has been hosting all previous auctions, that was the choice of franchises." The IPL teams have been asked to submit their players' retention list by January 4. As per reports, the final pool of players for the auction is most likely to be available by January 8.

The eleventh season of IPL marks the beginning of a new phase of the glittering cash-rich domestic tournament. The IPL Governing Council has increased the total salary purse for a team during the auction to Rs 80 crore. Previously, it was Rs 66 crore. “The minimum spend will be 75 percent of the salary cap for each season,” the BCCI official stated. It means a franchise is given this salary budget to build a 25-member (maximum) squad and they must spend Rs 60 crore in two-day of player auction event.

The eight teams in IPL 2018 are Chennai Super Kings, Delhi Daredevils, Kings XI Punjab, Kolkata Knight Riders, Mumbai Indians, Royal Challengers Bangalore, Rajasthan Royals and Sunrisers Hyderabad. The coming phase (next five years) of the successful T20 league has a new television broadcaster, Star Sports who bagged the media rights at a whopping INR 16,347.5 crore or USD 2.55 billion. The expensive title rights sale has led to increase in the budget of each team during the player auction.

According to the new 2018 IPL retention policy, all the eight teams can retain a maximum number of five players by the combination of pre-auction retention and Right to Match (RTM) cards. They can do it in not more than three in each category - three capped Indian players, a maximum number of two overseas players, a maximum number of two uncapped Indian players.

The biggest highlight of the 2018 IPL player auction will be which IPL team bags the former Indian skipper, MS Dhoni. He has been the most successful captain in IPL leading Chennai Super Kings since the inaugural season in 2008 till its interim suspension in 2016. In absence of CSK, Dhoni played for Rising Pune Supergiant, a not-so-memorable experience for the legendary cricketer. It will be exciting to see if CSK retains Dhoni in the side. The rulebook states both CSK and RR can only retain from the player pool that they had in 2015, provided they played for Rising Pune Supergiant and Gujarat Lions in the previous seasons. Interesting.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Dec 21, 2017 05:14 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).